Morning! Today’s lead story in the print edition doesn’t feature in its full form on the newspaper’s website, and is actually a compilation of various breaking news updates from three reporters over recent days; Mark Walker — an investigative reporter focused on transportation, who appears to have been dispatched to Colorado to cover this; Michael Levenson and Thomas Fuller, both page one correspondents, whose primary role is to write breaking news stories for the front page. That’s the first time since I’ve been reading the newspaper on your behalf that the front page story hasn’t also run online in its full form. Then again, the story is difficult and emotive and one senses that the Times is doing its best to lead with the most factual and unemotional version of it. I suspect that’s why it is yet to appear online.

So.

The piece is about “the man accused of an attack against demonstrators who were seeking to bring attention to hostages held in Gaza in Colorado.” He had been “planning it for a year and told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” federal prosecutors said on Monday.”

See what I mean? Every sentence in the piece is like that, it all feels like it’s been pored over by four editors after three people carefully wrote it, tiptoeing around all the sensitivities to make sure they got the fairest possible version of the story across. I think that the paper has done a good job, too. It’s not easy and they have devoted time and resources to getting it right. I am glad.

This is all as one would expect of the Times when covering a sensitive story involving the Middle East which has been spun different ways since it happened. For example The Times yesterday ran an analysis piece by another reporter, Tyler Pager, which said “Trump Talks a Lot About Antisemitism, With a Notable Caveat — The president made no reference to Jews after the Colorado attack.” 

One senses that by doing its best to lead today with the facts in the story, the Times is seeking to ensure that the record is as accurate as possible, knowing how much pressure journalists are going to be under to skew it one way or the other in the coming days.

One should also note that the facts in the piece are horrific.

That’s a lot of facts, and the piece, which continues on page 14, has plenty more. Meanwhile if you’re wondering which side I’m on in the Middle East please do read my earlier get-out-of-jail-free post on the subject. Sorry. But it is what it is. I’m being careful as I write this, too. I don’t want to diminish the horror of what happened. I also don’t want to sound like a cheerleader for Israeli foreign policy. It is impossible for me to be glib about the Middle East.

That said. As a Brit, every time I go into the bodega on a weekend evening, I’m assailed with questions about Palestine and cries of “1947,” the year Britain agreed to withdraw from Palestine (note the careful wording there, too), establishing Israel. I have to put up with it, and be diplomatic, because of my country’s role in the crisis. Likewise, as I often tell the guys downstairs, “I’m only here because I really want to buy some ice cream.”

Here’s another fact in the piece:

That is not good. I do not like that. Nobody should be attacked because of their race or ethnicity. That’s something we can all agree on.

And yet speaking of attacking someone for their race or ethnicity, Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, has focused on Mr. Soliman’s staying “illegally” in America after his visa expired in 2023. Mr. Soliman told investigators he was born in Egypt, lived in Kuwait for 17 years and moved to Colorado Springs with his wife and five children in August 2022. Here is Tricia emphasizing that he overstayed the tourist visa while pointedly emphasizing his Islamic-sounding name.

He had applied for asylum and was awaiting a decision. Immigrants who are waiting for their asylum cases to resolve may gain work permits to allow them to work in the country legally. So: One could argue that in fact Mr. Soliman is here legally, but it is what it is. A grey area.

The FBI found more than a dozen unlit Molotov cocktails (the Times repeatedly calls them this, and I realize it’s a style choice, but in my country we call them “petrol bombs” and it sounds less exotic) and a weed sprayer “potentially containing a flammable substance” near where Mr. Soliman was arrested. He told investigators he had researched on YouTube how to make the weapons, according to the FBI Affidavit.

I’m sure that YouTube’s owner, Google, is delighted with this note in the story. They couldn’t just write “on the Internet”, huh? They specified the platform. That’s great reporting, in my view.

He told investigators he had dressed like a gardener to “get as close as possible” to the demonstrators, and that he had waited until his daughter graduated from high school to stage the attack. He told investigators he didn’t use a gun because he “was blocked from purchasing a gun because of his immigration status.”

I’m sure that advocates for and against gun control will have strong views on that paragraph, too. On the one hand we want everyone to be able to buy guns. On the other we don’t like illegal immigrants buying guns. One can feel oneself tying oneself up in knots, here. Also: he wanted her to graduate from high school. Such an important detail. It emphasizes that he had hopes and dreams as well as hate and frustrations.

Since a few weeks after the 2023 Hamas attacks, the Run for Their Lives event has taken place every Sunday at 1 p.m. in Boulder. Demonstrators walk; speak the names of those still held hostage, sometimes sing “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, and bear witness, according to a regular attendee, Lisa Effress, 55.

Ms. Effress was having lunch near the march this Sunday when she heard sirens.

It’s awful. It really is. Ms. Effress told the Times she has always taught her daughter: “Be proud to be Jewish.” But, “in a time like this , it is crazy to think we will ever be walking again,” she said. “It’s dangerous. It’s not safe for us.”

Shaking my head. It’s awful.

The Boulder attack “highlighted a type of undocumented resident who has been largely absent from the heated political messaging on immigration,” the Times reports.

In 2023, the Government estimated there were around 400,000 such overstays, according to an official report issued by the Department of Homeland Security. This year about 2,400 Egyptians in the U.S. had overstayed their visas, or about 4 percent of all arrivals from Egypt, the report said.

And that’s the front page of the newspaper. I don’t have a nice bow to put on this story today, I’m afraid. But I wish you the best in processing what it all means. Meanwhile I’m tempted to get my next ice cream order on instacart rather than walk downstairs. But I’m going to walk downstairs, regardless. It’s important to stay engaged rather than to retreat, I feel, in life, in one’s community.

Thanks for letting me read it so that you don’t have to.

Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?

Yes: $105 million in reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. It’s too little and too late. Still. I wonder how the Trump administration will respond?

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

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